Cold borscht ready to be eaten, with other colorful foods from our CSA: purple peppers and multi-colored carrots. / SOPHIE X. POLLAK, for the Free Press

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Cold borscht, a beet soup, should look like melted black raspberry ice cream and taste like it came from Barney Greengrass the Sturgeon King, a delicatessen on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

With about 30 years' distance between Barney's borscht and me, I'd say the recipe I got from my mother, Kathy Pollak, who grew up in Greengrass's neighborhood, does the trick pretty well.

I adapted the recipe a bit, so the ingredients conform more closely to what's available locally — and, indeed, to our weekly farm share from Pete's Greens in Craftsbury (Butterworks Farm yogurt to supplement the sour cream; honey in place of sugar). We used cider vinegar from Gingerbrook Farm in South Washington, and raw honey from Champlain Valley Apiaries in Middlebury.

Beets from Pete's.

This is one of my family's favorite dishes, and each year I forgot how easy it is to make. The only time-consuming part is cooking the beets — but that requires almost zero attention. Wash them, place them unpeeled in a pot of water, and turn on the stove.

I cook them slowly, so the water (to be used later in the soup) doesn't boil away. Wednesday night the beets were cooking while we made pizza, ate dinner and cleaned the kitchen.

They were done in about 1 hour and 15 minutes (slow cooking, remember). By my test, beets are done when you can stick a paring knife in them with ease, but they don't fall apart. Drain immediately, taking care to save the water, so the beets don't keep cooking in the hot water.

Make the soup a day ahead and refrigerate. It's much better the next day.

We got our farm share the day I made the soup, and it happened to be full of vegetables that are color-coordinated with the pink borscht. So we ate the soup with multi-colored carrots, whole and unpeeled, and thick slices of purple peppers.

Process:

Wash the beets and put them, unpeeled, in a pot of water, cook them until you can stab them with a paring knife. I slice medium beets in half before cooking; if they're small I cook them whole.Drain the beets after cooking, taking care to save the water.Remove 2 cups of the beet water for the soup, let it cool a bit but not much. (Save the extra beet water in case you want to add it to soup, depending on your taste; I ended up using about 2 ˝ cups.)Add the lemon juice, vinegar and honey to the 2 cups of beet water/juice. You want the liquid warm enough to melt the honey. Add salt.Grate the beets, there's no need to peel them. Grate them until the peel is left in your hand. I don't use a food processor, just a basic hand grater, the side with the biggest holes.Add the grated beets to the soup, and let cool some before adding the sour cream/yogurt mixture. Whisk well and add the milk (or milk and cream). Add the onions and fresh dill.Refrigerate overnight. Serve with dill garnish. Be sure to scoop up the grated beets when serving, they'll sink to the bottom of the bowl.With salad, corn on the cob, bread and cheese - or a combination of these things - borscht makes a great summer supper: easy, nutritious and delicious.